The political crisis of hyper-partisanship created our current fiscal crisis by compounding the problem of unsustainable deficits and debt. Now the next challenge is hurtling toward Congress in the form of the Joint Special Committee, whose 12 members will be chosen by party leaders over the next week. This bipartisan supercommittee is empowered to find at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. The broad policies necessary to put our nation on stronger fiscal footing are well known—they include tax reform and entitlement reform and have been analyzed in reports ranging from the Bowles-Simpson Commission to the Gang of Six. The most important question is what people will be selected to serve on the committee. If ideological stubbornness is the key virtue partisan leaders are looking for in appointees, more political paralysis looms.

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The initial selections, announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late Tuesday afternoon, do not inspire much confidence in this regard. They include Senators Patty Murray of Washington, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Max Baucus of Montana...Reid intentionally decided to sidestep any member of the Gang of Six—including centrist Mark Warner, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and liberal Dick Durbin, who also served on the Bowles-Simpson Commission with distinction, managing to find common ground with conservative Sen. Tom Coburn on contentious issues like raising the retirement age...Instead, the co-Chair of the committee, Patty Murray, is also the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee—making her a blatantly political pick who will work hand in glove with Reid. John Kerry is a fine selection to the extent that the 2004 presidential nominee at least commands national attention, but he has not been part of the bipartisan groups that have been deep-diving on deficit and debt reduction to date. Max Baucus is the chairman of the powerful Budget Committee with plenty of bipartisan bona fides, but he voted against the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations at least in part because of his concerns that farm subsidies headed to his home state might be affected. That should be a disqualifying vote for serving on this committee.

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Because Democrats dissed the Gang of Six, it virtually guarantees that the GOP will bypass it as well. As former senator Alan Simpson—the respected co-leader of the Bowles-Simpson Commission—told me last week: “If you see the leadership not appointing members of the Gang of Six to the new commission of 12, you’ll know they don’t want to get anything done.” Well, that is what we are seeing right now. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already drawn a stubborn line in the sand, saying he will not appoint anyone willing to even consider revenue increases. (As Speaker John Boehner found out in his failed attempt to forge a $4 trillion grand bargain with President Obama, closing the tax loopholes that are essentially earmarks embedded in the tax code is now considered the same as tax hikes—even if rates are reduced—in the Tea Party’s new math.) McConnell also dismissed previous bipartisan deficit reduction plans in a July 31st interview on CNN’s State of the Union, in which he sought to distance this joint committee from Bowles-Simpson. “We haven’t had anything like this before,” he said. “It is not a commission that consists of outsiders.” “Outsiders”—that word choice reflects the insularity of the congressional echo chamber. Instead of “outsiders” like Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who are presumably tainted by their independence, McConnell seems to prefer the appointment of predictable partisan insiders like Jon Kyl of Arizona—a man who walked out of deficit reduction meetings with Vice President Biden and who infamously defended making false statements on the Senate floor in a debate over defunding Planned Parenthood by having a flack explain that it was “not intended to be a factual statement.”

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Already, Eric Cantor has reaffirmed his no-new-revenue pledge, while Nancy Pelosi has promised that entitlement reform will be avoided by her yet-to-be-announced appointees. The net result is a Joint Committee that seems likely to be stuffed with the ideologically stubborn, receptive to special interest arguments, and therefore unlikely to achieve bipartisan agreement. It is a recipe for failure at the very time we need just such a Joint Committee to succeed...It is a hyper-partisan vice parading as high-minded virtue. Even the urgency provided by the first downgrading in our history seems unlikely to dislodge it.

From the name Tea Party you could say it's in our DNA. It separates America from Europe... or used to anyway.

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where do you think your roads, schools, etc. come from? it's about living in a community, those who can, chip in! what makes my mind boggle the most is prominent members of the Tea Party claim to be "believers", but their philosophy is the antithesis of everything that Jesus Christ preached, caring for the poor and the vulnerable, giving to Caesar what is Caesar's etc... to imagine that the poor could be deprived of healthcare, a basic human right, in a country such as the US is unthinkable to me, a downright disgrace, and certainly not "christian"... how do you reconcile what Jesus wrote about the poor and the needy? (i'm not religious btw but i can quote the Bible from cover to cover when i need to which i mostly do in arguments with "Christians") - the Tea Partiers are an embarrassment to Christianity!

Not to go deeply into theology but I believe Christianity is about personal faith, personal salvation and a personal relationship with God. What you speak of is collective salvation or the Social Gospel. It's charity vs "it takes a village." The Social Gospel sounds good on the surface but is in reality socialism and secular progressivism cloaked in Christian thought and religious tone. Hence, liberals that argue Christian beliefs have no validity in deciding moral issues such as abortion, gay marriage or pornography have no problem dropping Jesus' name in defending higher taxes and increased government spending.

By any measure Americans (and conservatives more so) are the most charitable people on the planet-- so no lectures on who's an embarrassment to Christianity please.

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ooh goody, i'll just polish my guillotine

Yes, we should compare the American and French revolution sometime. Most informative.
Anyway, glad to see you have a sense of humor. Always welcomed by me. I have a few bêtes noires here that are frightfully humorless.

From the name Tea Party you could say it's in our DNA. It separates America from Europe... or used to anyway.

Not to go deeply into theology but I believe Christianity is about personal faith, personal salvation and a personal relationship with God. What you speak of is collective salvation or the Social Gospel. It's charity vs "it takes a village." The Social Gospel sounds good on the surface but is in reality socialism and secular progressivism cloaked in Christian thought and religious tone. Hence, liberals that argue Christian beliefs have no validity in deciding moral issues such as abortion, gay marriage or pornography have no problem dropping Jesus' name in defending higher taxes and increased government spending.

By any measure Americans (and conservatives more so) are the most charitable people on the planet-- so no lectures on who's an embarrassment to Christianity please.

Yes, we should compare the American and French revolution sometime. Most informative.
Anyway, glad to see you have a sense of humor. Always welcomed by me. I have a few bêtes noires here that are frightfully humorless.

I agree that Christianity is about personal faith and a personal relationship with God, but I really don't think Jesus would be in favor of denying someone rights because of their sexual orientation or letting people starve in the street because they lost their job or die from preventable medical issues because they had no insurance... I also think he'd take issue with using his name to further a political cause.

Not to go deeply into theology but I believe Christianity is about personal faith, personal salvation and a personal relationship with God. What you speak of is collective salvation or the Social Gospel. It's charity vs "it takes a village." The Social Gospel sounds good on the surface but is in reality socialism and secular progressivism cloaked in Christian thought and religious tone. Hence, liberals that argue Christian beliefs have no validity in deciding moral issues such as abortion, gay marriage or pornography have no problem dropping Jesus' name in defending higher taxes and increased government spending.

By any measure Americans (and conservatives more so) are the most charitable people on the planet-- so no lectures on who's an embarrassment to Christianity please.

Jesus spoke to the individual and the collective, to pretend or ignore otherwise is showing a huge misunderstanding of the Bible.

But you know this, the Tea Party picks and chooses when it wants collective salvation. When anyone speaks to me about the wrongs of "collective salvation" while being against gay marriage and speaks of a Judeo-Christian Constitution reminds me of those that pray on the street corners (Matthew 6:5).

Who is he blaming--that doesn't deserve to be called out (i.e. the Republicans)?

What exactly did Obama do wrong though--how was he ill-advised? Who should be fired?

And how is Obama supposed to get working on job creation? How is any president supposed to create jobs anyway?

I don't think it matters who deserves to be called out-you can play that game forever. He's the President-suck it up and just move on. Basically. That's what a leader does. People are obviously dead tired of the blame game. It gets us nowhere, especially now.

I don't know who should be fired, maybe he just needs something like an expert economic panel. I think a President can have more business friendly policies and that is supposed to create jobs. Whatever those are, I'm no expert. But supposedly his policies are making businesses afraid to expand, to hire, to spend money. I don't know how much of that is true and how much is certain business people just wanting to keep more profits for themselves.

I don't think it matters who deserves to be called out-you can play that game forever. He's the President-suck it up and just move on. Basically. That's what a leader does. People are obviously dead tired of the blame game. It gets us nowhere, especially now.

I disagree to a certain point. A good leader is suppose to define what works and what doesn't. If a company ran into a big mishap the CEO/President should define the mistake and punish those that caused the mistake. I think it's important to define the mistakes so that you don't repeat history.

But I do agree there's too much finger pointing and not enough defining.

Not to go deeply into theology but I believe Christianity is about personal faith, personal salvation and a personal relationship with God. What you speak of is collective salvation or the Social Gospel. It's charity vs "it takes a village." The Social Gospel sounds good on the surface but is in reality socialism and secular progressivism cloaked in Christian thought and religious tone.

I don't disagree about the personal nature of salvation, but since Jesus' message was also in the context of His Kingdom, you can't ignore that personal salvation is meant to have larger ramifications -- hence, exhortations in the Scriptures to remember the cause of the widow and the orphan, to welcome the alien, to do good to others, to meet the needs of the poor. The early church, after all, was composed of individuals who sold their goods on behalf of those who had need. Where you and I can probably agree is that such generosity is not meant to be externally coerced, but rather a reflection of internal motivation from a heart that seeks to give rather than receive.

I don't disagree about the personal nature of salvation, but since Jesus' message was also in the context of His Kingdom, you can't ignore that personal salvation is meant to have larger ramifications -- hence, exhortations in the Scriptures to remember the cause of the widow and the orphan, to welcome the alien, to do good to others, to meet the needs of the poor. The early church, after all, was composed of individuals who sold their goods on behalf of those who had need. Where you and I can probably agree is that such generosity is not meant to be externally coerced, but rather a reflection of internal motivation from a heart that seeks to give rather than receive.

Oh I agree. The belief that human beings are created in His image logically leads to an obligation to the well-being of our fellow man. "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

This belief led directly to churches, monasteries and religious orders funding or building orphanages, shelters and hospitals. Christians founded the Red Cross and Salvation Army. I recognize also the role of government in providing emergency relief on a grand scale as well as some form of a safety net for those that cannot care for themselves. Private secular humanitarian organizations do wonderful work as well.

But you and I believe that there is a poverty other than that of the purse. The poverty of the soul. And to ignore either one, I believe, is to ignore Biblical teachings.